See! I'm the same way now, re: deleting fics. Maybe a few months after I deleted those fics, I started to change my mind ... it feels somehow, slightly morally wrong to take those works away from people who were offered it freely. I don't like orphaning either for the same reason you mentioned, although I orphaned like, all my 2023 and 2022 fics earlier this year 💀 I had gone through a whole year's worth of fics before I realized I could anonymize them and I was SO AGGRIEVED!! It wiped out all my TNG fics completely.